I. Field
The described aspects relate generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to delivering media content to wireless devices.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems have become a prevalent means by which a majority of people worldwide communicate. Wireless communication devices have become smaller and more powerful in order to meet consumer needs and to improve portability and convenience. Further, the increase in processing power in wireless communication devices, such as cellular telephones, has lead to an increase in demands on wireless network transmission systems. As wireless communication device capabilities expand and also the demand from users for improved data-services increases, it can be difficult to maintain an older wireless network system in a manner that facilitates fully exploiting new and improved wireless communication device capabilities, such as the delivery of media content such as music into the wireless communication device. In particular, many old communication networks may not be able to handle the data throughput required by users downloading large amounts of media content, such as music files, onto their wireless communication devices. Correspondingly, many wireless communication devices operating on these older networks may not have the processing power, capability and/or memory to respectively process and/or store the media content, such as music files.
For example, service providers have found that it is not economically and/or technologically feasible to establish a compelling and user-friendly music delivery service for providing “near compact disc (CD) quality” music files, in the prevailing format of MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) through over-the-air transmission to wireless devices operating on a GSM and/or a CDMA2000 1X wireless network, because of the very high data-download time associated with these files over such networks. Further, scaling a music delivery service based on this data-format, for use by any economically feasible number of users of these networks, may exceed the network capacity, thereby overloading the data transfer capabilities of the network. As such, any current attempt to implement such a service in such a network would likely result in numerous network problems, including network congestion and crashes.
Additionally, the distribution of the downloaded music, including tracking and controlling consumers wishing to download music into their wireless communication devices, is an issue due to concerns relating to piracy of the downloaded music. More generally, tracking and controlling the distribution of downloaded media content is an issue.
Additionally, the proposition of adding a content delivery service to a communication network servicing wireless devices can be an expensive proposition for the owner of the network, such as the carrier. This is especially true when you consider that the owner or carrier may not have sufficient funds to purchase new and improved wireless communication network technologies. Also, slow adoption of such a new service by network subscribers lengthens the return on investment for the network owner or carrier, thereby increasing the financial strain of maintaining operations.
Further, in some media content delivery systems, more than one piece and/or type of content may be delivered to a device. As such, a device attempting to output multiple pieces and/or types of content to a user may experience problems with interference between each piece and/or type of content during a simultaneous presentation.
Thus, there exists a need for a system and/or methodology of delivering state-of-the-art media content over older, slower wireless networks having less than state-of-the-art data throughput capabilities, for addressing piracy issues involving consumers with respect to delivered media content, and for reducing the financial burden of implementing a media content delivery service. Additionally, there exists a need for apparatus and methods to simplify the simultaneous presentation of multiple pieces and/or types of content.